Tuesday 28 April 2015

Cecilia de Noël ~ Lanoe Falconer

Lanoe Falconer was the nom de plume of Mary Elizabeth Hawker (1848~1908), one of the most accomplished writers of the 1890s. She was born in Inverary, in Aberdeenshire, but grew up in Hampshire. Following her father's death in 1857, her mother remarried and the family lived for a time in France and Germany. Apparently, Hawker received little education, but she was always an avid reader. She began writing at a young age, and a few of her stories were published in magazines. But it was with her novel Mademoiselle Ixe, published in 1890, that she became a success. It was an instant bestseller in Britain and abroad, selling more than 40,000 copies of the English editions, and it was translated into French, German, Dutch, and Italian. She was read by Gladstone, Henry James and Virginia Woolf. Her writing career was cut short by chronic illness and the death of her mother, an emotional blow from which she never recovered. Hawker died from rapid consumption on the 16th of June 1908.

Cecilia de Noël was published in 1891 by Macmillan and Co. My copy used to belong to the Fasque library, hence the label stuck to the front cover.* 

Weald Manor has the reputation of being a haunted house. But it's owner, Sir George Atherley, does not believe in ghosts. One evening after dinner, Sir George is busy explaining to his wife and Mr Lyndsay, the narrator, that 'There is no revelation but that of science', when Lady Atherley hears a howling sound coming from the servants' quarters. It turns out that Ann, the kitchen maid, is in hysterics because Mrs Mallet, the cook, has seen a ghost. Sir George, ever the rationalist atheist, considers the ghost to be nothing more than a bogey.

A doctor is called, and he views the ghost as nothing but a symptom. All events, he explains, must obey the laws of nature and, by that token, no event can be supernatural. He does not believe in God or the possibility of an afterlife. He believes the best that can be hoped for is that the misery of this existence is ended by death.
'Either there is no God, and we shall still be at the mercy of the blind destiny we suffer under here; or there is a God, the God who looks on at this world and makes no sign! The sooner we escape from Him by annihilation the better.'
Lyndsay and Lady Atherley pay a visit to Mrs Mostyn, who claims to have seen the ghost. For her, the apparition served as a warning that her soul was in danger and resulted in her eventual conversion. She believes in heaven and hell... salvation for some, the fires of hell for all others.

Uncle Augustus, a Canon, pays a visit and is told about the resident spectre's doings. He is of the opinion, like the doctor, that all events are governed by natural law, and that apparitions and miraculous performances are a load of old phooey. This natural law does not, however, apply to the revealed truth of Christianity; that is entirely beyond doubt as far as the Canon is concerned. But a nighttime experience shakes his faith and undermines his conviction that ghosts are all nonsense.

Mr Austyn, the curate of Rood Warren, is the next visitor to spend the night at Weald Manor. He does not object to the idea of ghosts, being a man who considers his religion to be founded on the supernatural. For him, the ghost is a lost soul, a being forced to exist in eternal separation from the Divine Being.

Mrs Lucinda Molyneux is the next to arrive at the manor. She knows people who converse with spirits as easily as ordinary people converse with each other. She goes to bed hoping to see the ghost... and then does, and wishes she hadn't. She asks for Cecilia de Noël, Sir George's cousin, whose visit and account of the ghost is the last in the story.

This book is more about the nature of belief or non-belief in the supernatural than it is about the ghost itself. The religious and irreligious alike interpret the spectre's appearance according to their own character and beliefs. Ultimately, no character has a better grasp of the nature of existence than the next. Parts of the book make you think, others make you laugh. Sir George in particular is an amusing character; a decided atheist, he gets all the best lines. The absence of a distinctly Christian message led the rather prolific writer Charlotte Mary Yonge to say that it was 'a pity that so fine a book as Cecilia de Noël should be injured by the entire absence of Christianity'. ** Personally, I think that Cecilia de Noël is a very enjoyable and entertaining book.

A fine copy of the first edition costs about £150 at the moment (that's about $230). But fine copies don't come along all that often. Dodo Press published a paperback version in 2007, but I've not personally read that edition. That costs £4.99 at the moment. As far as I'm aware, there is no Kindle edition.
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*  Fasque House, by Fettercairn in Kincardineshire, was the former home of William Ewart Gladstone, four-times British Prime Minister. The Gladstone family owned the house until 2007.
**  March-Phillipps, Evelyn, Lanoe Falconer, Nisbet 1915.

Tuesday 21 April 2015

May Fair ~ Michael Arlen

Michael Arlen (1895~1956) was born Dikran Kouyoumdjian in Rustchuck, Bulgaria, to an Armenian merchant family who emigrated to England in 1901. Arlen was educated at Malvern college before attending the University of St Andrews, where he remained for only a brief period. Disowned by his family, he moved to London to earn a living as a writer. Initially he wrote under his birth name, but as his writing began to attract notice he adopted the nom de plume Michael Arlen. He changed his name legally to Michael Arlen in 1922, when he became a British subject. His early works, such as his novel Piracy, published in 1922, met with some success, but it was The Green Hat, published in 1924, that made him famous almost overnight, both in Britain and abroad.

May Fair was published by W. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. in 1925.* It contains: Prologue, A Romance in Old Brandy, The Ace of Cads, Where the Pigeons Go to Die, The Battle of Berkeley Square, The Prince of the Jews, The Three-Cornered Room, The Revolting Doom of a Gentleman Who Would Not Dance with His Wife, The Gentleman from America, To Lamoir, The Ghoul of Golders Green, Farewell These Charming People.

Not all of the stories in this collection have supernatural or weird elements, so I shall only pass comment on the ones that do. Oh, and Arlen was a witty fellow, so these tales are funny.

In 'The Battle of Berkeley Square', George Tarlyon is busy murdering worms when he begins to feel a pain in his left side. His brother-in-law, Hugo Cypress, arrives on the scene and suggests, as George is most likely suffering from pneumonia, that a pair of pyjamas must be bought immediately. Pyjamas having being ordered, George is then taken to Hugo's house to continue having pneumonia. At the same time, Hugo's wife (George's sister) is in labour in the same house and having an extremely bad time of it. Close to death, George's proximity to his sister brings about interesting results.

'The Prince of the Jews' is Julian Raphael, a diabolically handsome young Jewish fellow who's also a counterfeiter and murderer. Rear-Admiral Sir Charles Fasset-Faith gets it into his head to bring down the young rogue, with the help of George Tarlyon (him of the pneumonia and new pyjamas). But young Raphael has other ideas, generally involving a sharp knife and the Rear-Admiral's back... 'And I'll never throw but one more knife — but I'll do that if I have to come back from hell to do it!'

In 'The Revolting Doom of a Gentleman Who Would Not Dance with His Wife', an Australian gentleman called Justinian Pant is told by a soothsayer in Piccadilly Circus that he will become a Force, but that, just as the news of his good fortune had been proclaimed in Piccadilly Circus, so too would the news of his awful doom. He does indeed become a Force... he rises from one title to another until he becomes Marquess of Vest. But Lord Vest will not dance with his wife, and Mr Dunn most certainly will, and that's where the trouble starts.

'The Gentleman from America' is Mr Howard Cornelius Puce, a man who doesn't believe in ghosts and has been bet five hundred pounds that he cannot spend the night in a haunted room. He has one candle and no matches, and only one book to read - a gruesome ghost story called The Phantom Footsteps. He reads the book, knocks over the candle, then finds himself less alone than expected... and terrified.

'To Lamoir' is a romantic tale about Hugh and his wife Lamoir. Hugh meets Lamoir for the first time when he is twenty-nine years old. But he has met her already in a dream, when he was nine and she was seven and they climbed the big tree at Playmate Place.

'The Ghoul of Golders Green' has only a faintly supernatural twang to it, but it's worth reading just for the dialogue. Corpses are turning up all over the place, mutilated by a razor, and the police are clueless as to the identity of the culprit. Ralph Wyndham Trevor and Beau Maturin are out late one night when they happen upon Miss Samsonoff, who tells them that she is plagued by the ghost of her uncle's housekeeper. And her story looks like it might provide a clue as to the identity of the murderer at large on London's streets.

In 'Farewell, These Charming People', Lady Surplice has London and Paris eating out of her hand, until Mrs Amp comes on the scene and knocks her off her pedestal. The two hostesses are engaged in a party-giving battle to the death, until Mrs Amp is killed by an escaped lion. Her dying words, according the concierge, are 'This is the doing of Muriel Surplice! I will be revenged, if I roast in hell-fire for it!'

These tales may not be scary, though 'The Gentleman from America' is rather wicked, but they are very funny and entertaining.

A very good copy of May Fair goes for about ten to fifteen pounds at the moment. A fine copy costs about thirty to forty pounds ($45-60), but they are very much harder to find.
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* The book's full title is actually May Fair: Being an Entertainment purporting to reveal to Gentlefolk the Real state of Affairs existing in the very Heart of London during the fifteenth and sixteenth years of the reign of His Majesty King George the Fifth: together with Suitable reflections on the last follies, misadventures, and galanteries of These Charming People.

Photograph: Michael Arlen, 8th of Decem-ber 1930, by Bassano Ltd. ©National Portrait Gallery, London.

Thursday 9 April 2015

The Story of the Brown Hand ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) needs no introduction. I doubt there's a soul alive who hasn't heard of the creator of Sherlock Holmes. But the first thing I ever read by Conan Doyle was not a Holmes tale at all, it was a short story published in The Strand Magazine entitled 'The Story of the Brown Hand'.

It's a sad fact that much of Conan Doyle's non-Sherlockian fiction is ignored by most readers these days. But his supernatural and weird tales are just as compelling as his stories about the doings of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, and they deserve a wider readership. I offer here just one of his supernatural tales, and I hope to type up a few more over the coming months.

THE STORY OF THE BROWN HAND
By A. Conan Doyle
First published in The Strand Magazine in 1899.

Everyone knows that Sir Dominick Holden, the famous Indian surgeon, made me his heir, and that his death changed me in an hour from a hard-working and impecunious medical man to a well-to-do landed proprietor. Many know also that there were at least five people between the inheritance and me, and that Sir Dominick’s selection appeared to be altogether arbitrary and whimsical. I can assure them, however, that they are quite mistaken, and that, although I only knew Sir Dominick in the closing years of his life, there were none the less very real reasons why he should show his goodwill towards me. As a matter of fact, though I say it myself, no man ever did more for another than I did for my Indian uncle. I cannot expect the story to be believed, but it is so singular that I should feel that it was a breach of duty if I did not put it upon record — so here it is, and your belief or incredulity is your own affair.

Sir Dominick Holden, C. B., K. C. S. I., and I don’t know what besides, was the most distinguished Indian surgeon of his day. In the Army originally, he afterwards settled down into civil practice in Bombay, and visited as a consultant every part of India. His name is best remembered in connection with the Oriental Hospital, which he founded and supported. The time came, however, when his iron constitution began to show signs of the long strain to which he had subjected it, and his brother practitioners (who were not, perhaps, entirely disinterested upon the point) were unanimous in recommending him to return to England. He held on as long as he could, but at last he developed nervous symptoms of a very pronounced character, and so came back, a broken man, to his native county of Wiltshire. He bought a considerable estate with an ancient manor-house upon the edge of Salisbury Plain, and devoted his old age to the study of Comparative Pathology, which had been his learned hobby all his life, and in which he was a foremost authority.

We of the family were, as may be imagined, much excited by the news of the return of this rich and childless uncle to England. On his part, although by no means exuberant in his hospitality, he showed some sense of his duty to his relations, and each of us in turn had an invitation to visit him. From the accounts of my cousins it appeared to be a melancholy business, and it was with mixed feelings that I at last received my own summons to appear at Rodenhurst. My wife was so carefully excluded in the invitation that my first impulse was to refuse it, but the interest of the children had to be considered, and so, with her consent, I set out one October afternoon upon my visit to Wiltshire, with little thought of what that visit was to entail.

My uncle’s estate was situated where the arable land of the plains begins to swell upwards into the rounded chalk hills which are characteristic of the country. As I drove from Dinton Station in the waning light of that autumn day, I was impressed by the weird nature of the scenery. The few scattered cottages of the peasants were so dwarfed by the huge evidences of prehistoric life, that the present appeared to be a dream and the past to be the obtrusive and masterful reality. The road wound through the valleys, formed by a succession of grassy hills, and the summit of each was cut and carved into the most elaborate fortifications, some circular and some square, but all on a scale which has defied the winds and the rains of many centuries. Some call them Roman and some British, but their true origin and the reasons for this particular tract of country being so interlaced with entrenchments have never been finally made clear. Here and there on the long, smooth, olive-coloured slopes there rose small rounded barrows or tumuli. Beneath them lie the cremated ashes of the race which cut so deeply into the hills, but their graves tell us nothing save that a jar full of dust represents the man who once laboured under the sun.

It was through this weird country that I approached my uncle’s residence of Rodenhurst, and the house was, as I found, in due keeping with its surroundings. Two broken and weather-stained pillars, each surmounted by a mutilated heraldic emblem, flanked the entrance to a neglected drive. A cold wind whistled through the elms which lined it, and the air was full of the drifting leaves. At the far end, under the gloomy arch of trees, a single yellow lamp burned steadily. In the dim half-light of the coming night I saw a long, low building stretching out two irregular wings, with deep eaves, a sloping gambrel roof, and walls which were criss-crossed with timber balks in the fashion of the Tudors. The cheery light of a fire flickered int he broad, latticed window to the left of the low-porched door, and this, as it proved, marked the study of my uncle, for it was thither that I was led by his butler in order to make my host’s acquaintance.

He was cowering over his fire, for the moist chill of an English autumn had set him shivering. His lamp was unlit, and I only saw the red glow of the embers beating upon a huge, craggy face, with a Red Indian nose and cheek, and deep furrows and seams from eye to chin, the sinister marks of hidden volcanic fires. He sprang up at my entrance with some-thing of an old-world courtesy and welcomed me warmly to Rodenhurst. At the same time I was conscious, as the lamp was carried in, that it was a very critical pair of light blue eyes which looked out at me from under shaggy eyebrows, like scouts beneath a bush, and that this out-landish uncle of mine was carefully reading off my character with all the ease of a practised observer and an experienced man of the world.

For my part I looked at him, and I looked, and looked again, for I had never seen a man whose appearance was more fitted to hold one’s attention. His figure was the framework of a giant, but he had fallen away until his coat dangled straight down in a shocking fashion from a pair of broad and bony shoulders. All his limbs were huge and yet emaciated, and I could not take my gaze from his knobby wrists, and long, gnarled hands. But his eyes — those peering light blue eyes — they were the most arrestive of any of his peculiarities. It was not their colour alone, nor was it the ambush of hair in which they lurked; but it was the expression which I read in them. For the appearance and bearing of the man were masterful, and one expected a certain corresponding arrogance in his eyes, but instead of that I read the look which tells of a spirit cowed and crushed, the furtive, expectant look of the dog whose master has taken the whip from the rack. I formed my own medical diagnosis upon one glance at those critical and yet appealing eyes. I believed that he was stricken with some mortal ailment, that he knew himself to be exposed to sudden death, and that he lived in terror of it. Such was my judgment — a false one, as the event showed; but I mention it that it may help you to realize the look which I read in his eyes.

My uncle’s welcome was, as I have said, a courteous one, and in an hour or so I found myself seated between him and his wife at a comfortable dinner, with curious pungent delicacies upon the table, and a stealthy quick-eyed Oriental waiter behind his chair. The old couple had come round to that tragic imitation of the dawn of life when husband and wife, having lost or scattered all those who were their intimates, find themselves face to face and alone once more, their work done, and the end nearing fast. Those who have reached that stage in sweetness and love, who can change their winter into a gentle Indian summer, have come as victors through the ordeal of life. Lady Holden was a small, alert woman, with a kindly eye, and her expression as she glanced at him was a certificate of character to her husband. And yet, though I read a mutual love in their glances, I read also a mutual horror, and recognised in her face some reflection of that stealthy fear which I detected in his. Their talk was sometimes merry and sometimes sad, but there was a forced note in their merriment and a naturalness in their sadness which told me that a heavy heart beat upon either side of me.

We were sitting over our first glass of wine, and the servants had left the room, when the conversation took a turn which produced a remarkable effect upon my host and hostess. I cannot recall what it was which started the topic of the supernatural, but it ended in my showing them that the abnormal in psychical experiences was a subject to which I had, like many neurologists, devoted a great deal of attention. I concluded by narrating my experiences when, as a member of the Psychical Research Society, I had formed one of a committee of three who spent the night in a haunted house. Our adventures were neither exciting nor convincing, but, such as it was, the story appeared to interest my auditors in a remarkable degree. They listened with an eager silence, and I caught a look of intelligence between them which I could not understand. Lady Holden immediately afterwards rose and left the room.

Sir Dominick pushed the cigar-box over to me, and we smoked for some little time in silence. That huge bony hand of his was twitching as he raised it with his cheroot to his lips, and I felt that the man’s nerves were vibrating like fiddle-strings. My instincts told me that he was on the verge of some intimate confidence, and feared to speak lest I should interrupt it. At last he turned towards me with a spasmodic gesture like a man who throws his last scruple to the winds.

“From the little that I have seen of you it appears to me, Dr. Hardacre,” said he, “that you are the very man I have wanted to meet.”

“I am delighted to hear it, sir.”

“Your head seems to be cool and steady. You will acquit me of any desire to flatter you, for the circumstances are too serious to permit of insincerities. You have some special knowledge upon these subjects, and you evidently view them from that philosophical standpoint which robs them of all vulgar terror. I presume that the sight of an apparition would not seriously discompose you?”

“I think not, sir.”

“Would even interest you, perhaps?”

“Most intensely.”

“As a psychical observer, you would probably investigate it in as impersonal a fashion as an astronomer investigates a wandering comet?”

“Precisely.”

He gave a heavy sigh.

“Believe me, Dr. Hardacre, there was a time when I could have spoken as you do now. My nerve was a by-word in India. Even the Mutiny never shook it for an instant. And yet you see what I am reduced to — the most timorous man, perhaps, in all this county of Wiltshire. Do not speak too bravely upon this subject, or you may find yourself subjected to as long-drawn a test as I am — a test which can only end in the madhouse or the grave.”

I waited patiently until he should see fit to go farther in his confidence. His preamble had, I need not say, filled me with interest and expectation.

“For some years, Dr. Hardacre,” he continued, “my life and that of my wife have been made miserable by a cause which is so grotesque that it borders upon the ludicrous. And yet familiarity has never made it more easy to bear — on the contrary, as time passes my nerves become more worn and shattered by the constant attrition. If you have no physical fears, Dr. Hardacre, I should very much value your opinion upon this phenomenon which troubles us so.”

“For what it is worth my opinion is entirely at your service. May I ask the nature of the phenomenon?”

“I think that your experiences will have a higher evidential value if you are not told in advance what you may expect to encounter. You are yourself aware of the quibbles of unconscious cerebration and subjective impressions with which a scientific sceptic may throw a doubt upon your statement. It would be as well to guard against them in advance.”

"What shall I do then?"

“I will tell you. Would you mind following me this way?” He led me out of the dining-room and down a long passage until we came to a terminal door. Inside there was a large bare room fitted as a laboratory, with numerous scientific instruments and bottles. A shelf ran along one side, upon which there stood a long line of glass jars containing pathological and anatomical specimens.

“You see that I still dabble in some of my old studies,” said Sir Dominick. “These jars are the remains of what was once a most excellent collection, but unfortunately I lost the greater part of them when my house was burned down in Bombay in ’92. It was a most unfortunate affair for me — in more ways than one. I had examples of many very rare conditions, and my splenic collection was probably unique. These are the survivors.”

I glanced over them, and saw that they really were of very great value and rarity from a pathological point of view: bloated organs, gaping cysts, distorted bones, odious parasites — a singular exhibition of the products of India.

“There is, as you see, a small settee here,” said my host. “It was far from our intention to offer a guest so meagre an accommodation, but since affairs have taken this turn, it would be a great kindness upon your part if you would consent to spend the night in this apartment. I beg that you will not hesitate to let me know if the idea should be at all repugnant to you.”

“On the contrary,” I said, “it is most acceptable.”

“My own room is the second on the left, so that if you should feel that you are in need of company a call would always bring me to your side.”

“I trust that I shall not be compelled to disturb you.”

“It is unlikely that I shall be asleep. I do not sleep much. Do not hesitate to summon me.”

And so with this agreement we joined Lady Holden in the drawing-room and talked of lighter things.

It was no affectation upon my part to say that the prospect of my night’s adventure was an agreeable one. I have no pretence to greater physical courage than my neighbours, but familiarity with a subject robs it of those vague and undefined terrors which are the most appalling to the imaginative mind. The human brain is capable of only one strong emotion at a time, and if it be filled with curiosity or scientific enthusiasm, there is no room for fear. It is true that I had my uncle’s assurance that he had originally himself taken this point of view, but I reflected that the breakdown of his nervous system might be due to his forty years in India as much as to any psychical experiences which had befallen him. I at least was sound in nerve and brain, and it was with something of the pleasurable thrill of anticipation with which the sportsman takes his position beside the haunt of his game that I shut the laboratory door behind me, and partially undressing, lay down upon the rug-covered settee.

It was not an ideal atmosphere for a bedroom. The air was heavy with many chemical odours, that of methylated spirit predominating. Nor were the decorations of my chamber very sedative. The odious line of glass jars with their relics of disease and suffering stretched in front of my very eyes. There was no blind to the window, and a three-quarter moon streamed its white light into the room, tracing a silver square with filigree lattices upon the opposite wall. When I had extinguished my candle this one bright patch in the midst of the general gloom had certainly an eerie and discomposing aspect. A rigid and absolute silence reigned throughout the old house, so that the low swish of the branches in the garden came softly and soothingly to my ears. It may have been the hypnotic lullaby of this gentle susurus, or it may have been the result of my tiring day, but after many dozings and many efforts to regain my clearness of perception, I fell at last into a deep and dreamless sleep.

I was awakened by some sound in the room, and I instantly raised myself upon my elbow on the couch. Some hours had passed, for the square patch upon the wall had slid downwards and sideways until it lay obliquely at the end of my bed. The rest of the room was in deep shadow. At first I could see nothing, but presently, as my eyes became accustomed to the feint light, I was aware, with a thrill which all my scientific absorption could not entirely prevent, that something was moving slowly along the line of the wall. A gentle, shuffling sound, as of soft slippers, came to my ears, and I dimly discerned a human figure walking stealthily from the direction of the door. As it emerged into the patch of moonlight I saw very clearly what it was and how it was employed. It was a man, short and squat, dressed in some sort of dark grey gown, which hung straight from his shoulders to his feet. The moon shone upon the side of his face, and I saw that it was chocolate-brown in colour, with a ball of black hair like a woman’s at the back of his head. He walked slowly, and his eyes were cast upwards towards the line of bottles which contained those gruesome remnants of humanity. He seemed to examine each jar with attention, and then to pass on to the next. When he had come to the end of the line, immediately opposite my bed, he stopped, faced me, threw up his hands with a gesture of despair, and vanished from my sight.



I have said that he threw up his hands, but I should have said his arms for as he assumed that attitude of despair I observed a singular peculiarity about his appearance. He had only one hand! As the sleeves drooped down from the upflung arms I saw the left plainly, but the right ended in a knobby and unsightly stump. In every other way his appearance was so natural, and I had both seen and heard him so clearly, that I could easily have believed that he was an Indian servant of Sir Dominick’s who had come into my room in search of something. It was only his sudden disappearance which would have suggested anything more sinister to me. As it was I sprang from my couch, lit a candle, and examined the whole room carefully. There were no signs of my visitor, and I was forced to conclude that there had really been something outside the normal laws of Nature in his appearance. I lay awake for the remainder of the night, but nothing else occurred to disturb me.

I am an early riser, but my uncle was an even earlier one, for I found him pacing up and down the lawn at the side of the house. He ran towards me in his eagerness when he saw me come out from the door.

“Well, well!” he cried. “Did you see him?”

“An Indian with one hand?”

“Precisely.”

“Yes, I saw him” — and I told him all that had occurred. When I had finished, he led the way into his study.



“We have a little time before breakfast,” said he. “It will suffice to give you an explanation of this extraordinary affair — so far as I can explain that which is essentially inexplicable. In the first place, when I tell you that for four years I have never passed one single night, either in Bombay, aboard ship, or here in England without my sleep being broken by this fellow, you will understand why it is that I am a wreck of my former self. His programme is always the same. He appears by my bedside, shakes me roughly by the shoulder, passes from my room into the laboratory, walks slowly along the line of my bottles, and then vanishes. For more than a thousand times he has gone through the same routine.”

“What does he want?”

“He wants his hand.”

“His hand?”

“Yes, it came about in this way. I was summoned to Peshawur for a consultation some ten years ago, and while there I was asked to look at the hand of a native who was passing through with an Afghan caravan. The fellow came from some mountain tribe living away at the back of beyond somewhere on the other side of Kaffiristan. He talked a bastard Pushtoo, and it was all I could do to understand him. He was suffering from a soft sarcomatous swelling of one of the metacarpal joints, and I made him realize that it was only by losing his hand that he could hope to save his life. After much persuasion he consented to the operation, and he asked me, when it was over, what fee I demanded. The poor fellow was almost a beggar, so that the idea of a fee was absurd, but I answered in jest that my fee should be his hand, and that I proposed to add it to my pathological collection.

“To my surprise he demurred very much to the suggestion, and he explained that according to his religion it was an all-important matter that the body should be reunited after death, and so make a perfect dwelling for the spirit. The belief is, of course, an old one, and the mummies of the Egyptians arose from an analogous superstition. I answered him that his hand was already off, and asked him how he intended to preserve it. He replied that he would pickle it in salt and carry it about with him. I suggested that it might be safer in my keeping than in his, and that I had better means than salt for preserving it. On realizing that I really intended to carefully keep it, his opposition vanished instantly. ‘But remember, sahib,’ said he, ‘I shall want it back when I am dead.’ I laughed at the remark, and so the matter ended. I returned to my practice, and he no doubt in the course of time was able to continue his journey to Afghanistan.

“Well, as I told you last night, I had a bad fire in my house at Bombay. Half of it was burned down, and, among other things, my pathological collection was largely destroyed. What you see are the poor remains of it. The hand of the hillman went with the rest, but I gave the matter no particular thought at the time. That was six years ago.

“Four years ago — two after the fire — I was awakened one night by a furious tugging at my sleeve. I sat up under the impression that my favourite mastiff was trying to arouse me. Instead of this, I saw my Indian patient of long ago, dressed in the long grey gown which was the badge of his people. He was holding up his stump and looking reproachfully at me. He then went over to my bottles, which at the time I kept in my room, and he examined them carefully, after which he gave a gesture of anger and vanished. I realized that he had just died, and that he had come to claim my promise that I should keep his limb in safety for him.

“Well, there you have it all, Dr. Hardacre. Every night at the same hour for four years this performance has been repeated. It is a simple thing in itself, but it has worn me out like water dropping on a stone. It has brought a vile insomnia with it, for I cannot sleep now for the expectation of his coming. It has poisoned my old age and that of my wife, who has been the sharer in this great trouble. But there is the breakfast gong, and she will be waiting impatiently to know how it fared with you last night. We are both much indebted to you for your gallantry, for it takes something from the weight of our misfortune when we share it, even for a single night, with a friend, and it reassures us as to our sanity which we are sometimes driven to question.”

This was the curious narrative which Sir Dominick confided in me — a story which to many would have appeared to be a grotesque impossibility, but which, after my experience of the night before, and my previous knowledge of such things, I was prepared to accept as an absolute fact. I thought deeply over the matter, and brought the whole range of my reading and experience to bear upon it. After breakfast, I surprised my host and hostess by announcing that I was returning to London by the next train.

“My dear doctor,” cried Sir Dominick, in great distress, “you make me feel that I have been guilty of a gross breach of hospitality in intruding this unfortunate matter upon you. I should have borne my own burden.”

“It is, indeed, that matter which is taking me to London,” I answered; “but you are mistaken, I assure you, if you think that my experience of last night was an unpleasant one to me. On the contrary, I am about to ask your permission to return in the evening and spend one more night in your laboratory. I am very eager to see this visitor once again.”

My uncle was exceedingly anxious to know what I was about to do, but my fears of raising false hopes prevented me from telling him. I was back in my own consulting-room a little after luncheon, and was confirming my memory of a passage in a recent book upon occultism which had arrested my attention when I read it.



“In the case of earth-bound spirits,” said my authority, “some one dominant idea obsessing them at the hour of death is sufficient to hold them to this material world. They are the amphibia of this life and of the next, capable of passing from one to the other as the turtle passes from land to water. The causes which may bind a soul so strongly to a life which its body has abandoned are any violent emotion. Avarice, revenge, anxiety, love, and pity have all been known to have this effect. As a rule it springs from some unfulfilled wish, and when the wish has been fulfilled the material bond relaxes. There are many cases upon record which show the singular persistence of these visitors, and also their disappearance when their wishes have been fulfilled, or in some cases when a reasonable compromise has been effected.”

A reasonable compromise effected” — those were the words which I had brooded over all the morning, and which I now verified in the original. No actual atonement could be made here — but a reasonable compromise! I made my way as fast as a train could take me to the Shadwell Seamen’s Hospital, where my old friend Jack Hewett was house-surgeon. Without explaining the situation I made him understand exactly what it was that I wanted.

“A brown man’s hand!” said he, in amazement. “What in the world do you want that for?”

“Never mind. I’ll tell you some day. I know that your wards are full of Indians.”

“I should think so. But a hand — ” He thought a little and then struck a bell.

“Travers,” said he to a student-dresser, “what became of the hands of the Lascar which we took off yesterday? I mean the fellow from the East India Dock who got caught in the steam winch.”

“They are in the post-mortem room, sir.”

“Just pack one of them in antiseptics and give it to Dr. Hardacre.”

And so I found myself back at Rodenhurst before dinner with this curious outcome of my day in town. I still said nothing to Sir Dominick, but I slept that night in the laboratory, and I placed the Lascar’s hand in one of the glass jars at the end of my couch.

So interested was I in the result of my experiment that sleep was out of the question. I sat with a shaded lamp beside me and waited patiently for my visitor. This time I saw him clearly from the first. He appeared beside the door, nebulous for an instant, and then hardening into as distinct an outline as any living man. The slippers beneath his grey gown were red and heelless, which accounted for the low, shuffling sound which he made as he walked. As on the previous night he passed slowly along the line of bottles until he paused before that which contained the hand. He reached up to it, his whole figure quivering with expectation, took it down, examined it eagerly, and then, with a face which was convulsed with fury and disappointment, he hurled it down on to the floor. There was a crash which resounded through the house, and when I looked up the mutilated Indian had disappeared. A moment later my door flew open and Sir Dominick rushed in.



“You are not hurt?” he cried.

“No — but deeply disappointed.”

He looked in astonishment at the splinters of glass, and the brown hand lying upon the floor.

“Good God!” he cried. “What is this?”

I told him my idea and it wretched sequel. He listened intently, but shook his head.

“It was well thought of,” said he, “but I fear that there is no such easy end to my sufferings. But one thing I now insist upon. It is that you shall never again upon any pretext occupy this room. My fears that something might have happened to you — when I heard that crash — have been the most acute of all the agonies which I have undergone. I will not expose myself to a repetition of it.”

He allowed me, however, to spend the remainder of that night where I was, and I lay there worrying over the problem and lamenting my own failure. With the first light of morning there was the Lascar’s hand still lying upon the floor to remind me of my fiasco. I lay looking at it — and as I lay suddenly an idea flew like a bullet through my head and brought me quivering with excitement out of my couch. I raised the grim relic from where it had fallen. Yes, it was indeed so. The hand was the left hand of the Lascar.

By the first train I was on my way to town, and hurried at once to the Seamen’s Hospital. I remembered that both hands of the Lascar had been amputated, but I was terrified lest the precious organ which I was in search of might have been already consumed in the crematory. My suspense was soon ended. It had still been preserved in the post-mortem room. And so I returned to Rodenhurst in the evening with my mission accomplished and the material for a fresh experiment.

But Sir Dominick Holden would not hear of my occupying the laboratory again. To all my entreaties he turned a deaf ear. It offended his sense of hospitality, and he could no longer permit it. I left the hand, therefore, as I had done its fellow the night before, and I occupied a comfortable bedroom in another portion of the house, some distance from the scene of my adventures.

But in spite of that my sleep was not destined to be uninterrupted. In the dead of the night my host burst into my room, a lamp in his hand. His huge gaunt figure was enveloped in a loose dressing-gown, and his whole appearance might certainly have seemed more formidable to a weak-nerved man than that of the Indian of the night before. But it was not his entrance so much as his expression which amazed me. He had turned suddenly younger by twenty years at least. His eyes were shining, his features radiant, and he waved one hand in triumph over his head. I sat up astounded, staring sleepily at this extraordinary visitor. But his words soon drove the sleep from my eyes.



“We have done it! We have succeeded!” he shouted. “My dear Hardacre, how can I ever in this world repay you?”

“You don’t mean to say that it is all right?”

“Indeed I do. I was sure that you would not mind being awakened to hear such blessed news.”

“Mind! I should think not indeed. But is it really certain?”

“I have no doubt whatever upon the point. I owe you such a debt, my dear nephew, as I never owed a man before and never expected to. What can I possibly do for you that is commensurate? Providence must have sent you to my rescue. You have saved both my reason and my life, for another six months of this must have seen me either in a cell or a coffin. And my wife — it was wearing her out before my eyes. Never could I have believed that any human being could have lifted this burden off me.” He seized my hand and wrung it in his bony grip.

“It was only an experiment — a forlorn hope — but I am delighted from my heart that it has succeeded. But how do you know that all is right? Have you seen something?”

He seated himself at the foot of my bed.

“I have seen enough,” said he. “It satisfies me that I shall be troubled no more. What has passed is easily told. You know that at a certain hour this creature always comes to me. To-night he arrived at the usual time, and aroused me with even more violence than is his custom. I can only surmise that his disappointment of last night increased the bitterness of his anger against me. He looked angrily at me and then went on his usual round. But in a few minutes I saw him, for the first time since this persecution began, return to my chamber. He was smiling. I saw the gleam of his white teeth through the dim light. He stood facing me at the end of my bed, and three times he made the low Eastern salaam which is their solemn leave-taking. And the third time that he bowed he raised his arms over his head, and I saw his two hands outstretched in the air. So he vanished, and, as I believe, for ever.”

So that is the curious experience which won me the affection and the gratitude of my celebrated uncle, the famous Indian surgeon. His anticipations were realized, and never again was he disturbed by the visits of the restless hillman in search of his lost member. Sir Dominick and Lady Holden spent a very happy old age, unclouded, as far as I know, by any trouble, and they finally died during the great influenza epidemic within a few weeks of each other. In his lifetime he always turned to me for advice in everything which concerned that English life of which he knew so little; and I aided him also in the purchase and development of his estates. It was no great surprise to me, therefore, that I found myself eventually promoted over the heads of five exasperated cousins, and changed in a single day from a hard-working country doctor into the head of an important Wiltshire family. I at least have reason to bless the memory of the man with the brown hand, and the day when I was fortunate enough to relieve Rodenhurst of his unwelcome presence.

Thursday 2 April 2015

A Fire of Driftwood ~ D. K. Broster

A Fire of Driftwood: A Collection of Short Stories was published in 1932 by William Heinemann Ltd, a decade before Broster's more well-known volume Couching at the Door, which I wrote about a couple of months ago. A Fire of Driftwood is split into two sections, with the first having nothing supernatural about it. The second section is the one of interest here, as it contains: 'All Souls' Day', 'The Promised Land', 'Clairvoyance', and 'The Window'.

In 'All Souls' Day', Mildmay Fane narrowly escapes death after being attacked and left for dead by the Chevalier de Crussol and his henchmen. Believing that his friends have forsaken him, he turns to a life of vice and is about to follow a path which would lead to ruination when he is visited by a ghost from his past.

In 'The Promised Land', Caroline Murchison and Ellen Wright are visiting Siena. Ellen has dreamed of visiting Italy for decades, but the presence of her overbearing cousin Caroline, who is forever arranging things and won't leave her side for a moment, is threatening to ruin the entire trip. Desperate to visit Florence alone, without her cousin's constant talking, knitting and interfering, Ellen is willing to do just about anything for a moment's solitary peace. It is a tale of obsession and desperation, and the effect of both on everyday reality. And to my mind, regardless of the fact that there is no supernatural element, it is the best story in the book.

In 'Clairvoyance', Edward Strode is an expert on Japanese swords and has recently acquired a new specimen for his collection, but there is some doubt concerning the authenticity of the tsuba (sword guard). Cynthia Storrington is a seventeen-year-old guest of Strode's daughter, and it turns out that she's a sensitive and susceptible to hypnotism. So, Mrs Strode persuades her husband to have the girl 'willed' to examine the sword, with its live blade, and determine if the tsuba is genuine or not... with devastating results. I found this to be a very clever tale. And, as researching Japanese art and history was my day job for a number of years, it was of particular interest to me personally. Given that most English country houses had weaponry of one sort or another pinned up somewhere when this story was published, I can't help wondering how many people read it, glanced up at the sharp-edged artefacts displayed around their own homes, then vowed never to touch them again.

In 'The Window', Romilly is determined to see inside the long uninhabited and sadly neglected Manoir de Boisrobert in Normandy. Having volunteered to fight in the Great War, he finds himself not far from the isolated old manoir and decides to finally achieve his goal. Having no key, he breaks into the empty house and, being an artist, decides to paint a picture of one of the rooms. He imagines how the room would look furnished and full of people. And eventually, he begins to feel that the room truly is occupied... by people who resent his presence. Wanting to allow some air into the room, he attempts to open one of the windows, and ends up on his knees with his arms imprisoned beneath its lower sash... unable to move or escape.

A Fire of Driftwood in fine condition, with a dust jacket, costs around a hundred pounds ($150 approx.), but generally speaking copies don't show up with the jacket all that often. A fine copy without the jacket costs about fifty pounds. Three of the tales - 'The Promised Land', 'Clairvoyance', and 'The Window' - can be found in Wordsworth Editions' Couching at the Door, which costs a mere £2.99.